TANKA.

Let me say at the beginning, I am not an expert or authority on Japanese Poetry, merely a lover. I have gleaned a little on my own way and I'm writing this very limited introduction in the hope that it will give you a starting point for your own discoveries. There are many excellent books and articles about them, a multitude of sites on the world wide web featuring them, and the various "schools" that have arisen over the years. If this short piece stimulates you to try writing them yourself, looking for more information about them, then it will have succeeded in its purpose.

Japanese (and for that matter Chinese) poetic forms generally work on the basis of syllabic and line counts. These languages are very different from English, and argument still rages as to whether we need to use syllabic counts in English transliterations of them, though we have retained the line count. I have no intention of prolonging that discussion - very interesting as it is - whether you chose to remain with syllable counting is up to you, and there will be other documents in the library of the Eastern Forms section of the Poetry Forum which will state their own cases.

As with all forms that have been imported into English, they are evolving all the time - and time itself will decide what becomes the most commonly accepted variants of them. So be it.

Tanka ("short poem"), or Waka (Japanese poem") as they have been called too, have a long history in Japan. The strict form evolved from Japanese songs about thirteen hundred years ago, and took on the 5-7-5-7-7 structure. One of the intriguing aspects of them is that the form was adopted for secret messages between lovers - who in the morning after a pleasant dalliance would write them to their lover, a charming and well-mannered custom had begun. This often initiated a series of tanka responses between them, and doubtless did a lot to keep the flame of love alight. However, the content of them was mostly very subtle, with references in them that only the respondents would fully understand - sensible when you think about it, because at that time messages were delivered by servants (who had their suspicions, of course, but were not intended to "know all").

As a result of this Tanka became very popular, and competitions were held for reading and writing them. So much so that from about 700 AD the emperors of Japan commanded that anthologies of them be compiled - as a source of reference for those who wanted to become proficient in them and as guidelines to excellence.

Tanka are used for exploring feelings, although this is not a hard and fast rule, and the form has been used for many other purposes including Zen expressions. A very important aspect of them is that the feelings should be fresh and originally expressed.


Right - now we know where they came from, and a bit about what they deal with - how do we write them, what is the form?

There are five lines: the first has five syllables; the second, seven; the third, five; the sixth and seventh have seven. There are writers of tanka today who have moved away from the syllable count, but retain the short/long/short/long/long aspect. And, just to make life interesting, some people have written them with the two long lines first, but these are rare. Strictly speaking, more or less lines mean that it isn't a tanka in the commonly accepted definition.

The third line is often a bridge : and usually links the thoughts/images in the first two lines to the thoughts/images final two. Like most things, there are variants on the placement of this bridging line, with it occupying the second *or* third line, but mostly it's in the middle of the Tanka.

If you are familiar with Haiku, then you will have come across the basic structure of two main images, each swinging about the other, and enhancing both.

Mostly, a Tanka begins with an image from nature, them swings to a feeling that is linked to it using the last two long lines. But by no means always, it depends on the subject and the preference of the author.

Capitalisation and punctuation : variable. In Japanese there are "cutting" words which indicate where a shift occurs, and "season" words that imply the time of year, and "emotion" words that imply emotion with an object - and they have huge lists of them. In English we have few words with a commonly agreed loading of these types, our language is ever changing - and frequently words that have been translated from Japanese into English come across to us differently. A common problem in translation, but that's another issue. So, we can use either physical line breaks, spacing on the page, or punctuation. You decide what you want to use to best convey your intended meaning.

As a general rule, limit the number of images/thoughts in your tanka. The form is a short one, and too much imagery tends to confuse, and what's more destroys the simple and effective nature of them. Again, though not quite so vital, try to use images as against statements of opinion/feeling. Show us, don't tell us - a useful precept. You have a limited amount of words and lines to use - don't waste them on padding.


Now what are you waiting for, why not have an "affair" with them? Noooo, I'm not suggesting that you get involved with human couplings, particularly, but the mind set is the same). Then go and write some of your own, and let us see the results!


Neil